Essays
Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?
A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page
Michel Chaouli
The Body I Couldn't Abstract
Motherhood reshaped how I see shame, art, and the female body
Megan O’Grady
Browse
Essays
The Path to Playwright
Discovering my literary hero in an unlikely place
Sonya Kelly
September 9, 2024
The Frictions of Interracial Love
How one fundamental difference can color every aspect of marriage
Anne Anlin Cheng
September 5, 2024
The Poet as a Young Critic
In Thom Gunn’s early work for The Yale Review, he valued style above all else
Langdon Hammer
June 27, 2024
A Reviewer’s Life
The material constraints of writing criticism today
Christine Smallwood
June 10, 2024
Critical Navel-Gazing
If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem
Namwali Serpell
June 10, 2024
